‘We had it won, then
‘WE had the game won in a way at half-time, then we had to win it again, I suppose,’ was Meath manager Joe Treanor’s reaction after watching his charges scrape through to the All-Ireland semi-finals.
The Royals led by 10 points at one stage, but that advantage was reduced to the minimum entering the closing stages following a supercharged revival by Derry. However Meath prevailed, scoring the game’s last four points to see them through to a semi-final for the first time since 2012.
‘We lost the game for about 10 or 12 minutes in the second half, we knew Derry were going to come back at us,’ Treanor continued.
‘We got the opening point of the second half and we thought that would settle us, but Derry got back into the game. They had a purple patch and we couldn’t get our hands on the ball.
‘But we have played a lot of Ulster teams over the last 18 months and I’d like to think that we know how to deal with them and in the last 10 minutes of the game we regained our composure and took control again. We tagged on the last four points after going for about 20 minutes without a score.
‘We made a few silly mistakes in the second half, Derry dominated midfield and we gave away possession cheaply, but this is a very solid group of players and they know how to see out a game like this and they took control again for the last 10 minutes.
‘Our backs were against the wall, but we recovered and that’s the sign of a team that has matured, a team that is accustomed to winning.’
According to the Monaghan native, this was just the sort of game Meath needed following a relatively easy passage through Leinster.
‘The players will have learned a lot from this game, I don’t mean any disrespect to Laois or Kildare, our last two games in the Leinster MFC. We won those games quite easily and we needed a game like this today.